thibaultintheworld: SEA2014: Day 16-18: Lloret Del Myanmar

Enjoying the beach at Chaung Thar, SEA's own Lloret Del Myanmar.

Breakfast with a view over the Bengal Sea.

A short introduction:

Leaving Inlay, and after a 10-hour busride, I arrived back in Yangon on friday morning. I took my time to have a coffee and wake up slowly, before I headed for Wim’s hotel and met him there right before his breakfast. He had some meetings planned during the day, which implicated that I was going to chill out at his hotel while he was gone. Fortunately, the afternoon meeting got cancelled, and after a nice lunch with his colleague, Wim and I started our queeste. We went looking for a taxi driver who would drive us 250kms straight across Southern-Myanmar to our weekend destination: Chaung Thar Beach.

Suprisingly enough, we quickly encounterd a driver as nuts as we needed. Before we knew it, and after a 15mins stop to pick up our driver’s son at his school, we were driving across Myanmar’s countryside with a beer in our hand and music blasting from Wim’s laptop on the backseat of a Myanmar taxi. If you think you can imagine how crazy the situation was, I can assure you it was even worse than that. Worse in a good way that is. Two AFS-friends having the time of their lives in the backseat of a taxi, with the driver’s son next to him, going to the beach a weekend. We were in quite a good mood, yeah!

It took us 6,5hour to reach our destination and when we arrived at our hotel, we just put our stuff in our room and headed to a restaurant for dinner. Luckily we found one which was still open, it was after 10PM already, and we enjoyed our dinner with a Myanmar beer before heading to the beach and taking a glaze at the pitch black Bengal Sea, part of the Indian Ocean. I must admit it, there is nothing better as finishing a long trip at an ocean’s border. It gives you a sense of freedom, but at the same time makes it clear to you that no matter how far you travel, nature will always form a natural border you will have to cross before being able to head for your next destination or place of departure. This is how our Friday ended, with a beer and a view into the black tide.

Saturday morning I woke up as the clock said 8AM and went straight outside. What we hadn’t fully understood the night before was that our rooms actually came out directly on the beach. Yes, we had a seaside-room and it was insanely awesome. I headed straight outside for a swim in the ocean before enjoying a chinese tea on our terrace. About an hour later Wim joined me for breakfast and we decided we would do exactly nothing this Saturday as Wim could really use a day of nothing, after all he is a hard-working man, and I was just enjoying my last few days of freedom before work life hits me. So after our breakfast we chilled out a bit and took a long walk along the beach. Not the romantic kind though, just to be clear. In the meanwhile we encountered our driver, and his son, as they were chilling on a beach terrace as well. Clearly they were going to stay at the beach all weekend as well, as they were going to drive us back on Sunday too. In some weird way this made us feel better about ourselves as we kind of believe that after this weekend, the father-son relationship is way stronger now than it used to be. Small example: on the way to the beach father-son didn’t speak even once while on the way back they at least exchanged five sentences during a 6-hour ride. Close enough, right?

After our lunch -we had fish on a stick, yes an actual fishstick!-, and a couple of beers on a beach terrace with music so loud that we had to shout to hear one another, while we were the only ones on this terrace, we headed to the ‘centre’ of this town. Well, it appears that the motorbike traffic on the beach was busier than the one in the ‘main street’, so after a game of pool in a -literally- shack, we found ourselves outside of the town in a matter of minutes. Via a overgrown pathway, going beneath some wires and across a wild river, we were right back on the beach. We had a fresh coconut, the juice as well as its fruit, and as we noticed that we were already more sunburned than we would ever be in any Belgian summer, ever, we decided to enjoy the sunset on another terrace with multos birras. So be it and before we knew it, it was 9PM and again we hadn’t eaten. As said, if you haven’t had dinner at 7.30PM here: you are weird. Luckily a local advised us with a restaurant and after that we headed back to our own private beach terrace.

During the day Wim and I had bought a piece of fireworks for a mere $10 and as the clock hit 11.30PM we decided to light it up. Even though we had been extremely over-excited about this all day since we bought it, it was still extremely awesome to light this fireworks on and see them explode above our heads. Just like that, my SEA2014-adventure had come to an end.

An annoying Brittish lad, complaining about the fireworks’ noice, too many street/beach vendors and a great breakfast later, Wim and I took a last dive in the ocean and at noon on Sunday we were back in the taxi heading for Yangon. We arrived there early evening and met up with Wim’s colleague, who bursted out in tears when she saw how sunburned we were, and had an awesome evening with drinks, dinner & darts at some local venues.

safe travels_